Late work, extensions, fieldwork conduct, safety, and what to do when your queue disappears.
Everything else on this page can safely wait until you actually need it.
Fieldwork conduct#
Most of this course takes place in public spaces where other people are simply trying to get something done. There are four rules here, and unlike most things in the course they are not up for negotiation.
You observe, you do not participate. Do not join a queue in order to measure it, do not ask anyone to let you go ahead, and do not create a disturbance to see what happens. If your measurement requires you to change the queue, it is not a measurement.
You count events, not people. That means no photographs of individuals, no video, no audio recording, no names written down and no following anybody around. A tally sheet really is the whole instrument, and it is all you need.
You answer honestly when asked. If a staff member or a member of the public asks what you are doing, tell them. Say you are a student at Slop University measuring how long the queue takes, and offer to stop. Every student who has done this has been allowed to carry on, and the two who were asked to leave left immediately, which is why the site is still available.
You get permission for private property. Anything indoors with staff, and anything where you will be visibly recording for more than a few minutes. Priya has a one-paragraph email that works; use it in week 1, not week 4.
Week 8 is the only session that involves speaking to people who are waiting, and it has its own consent procedure on the session page.
When your queue disappears#
It happens most years. A shop closes, a desk moves, a service goes online, the site withdraws permission. This is not your fault and it does not cost you marks.
Tell Priya as soon as you know. There is a list of queues that have agreed to be measured, and there is a set of archived observation data from previous years for the case where a site fails after week 8 and there is no time to start again. Using the archive is a documented decision, not a penalty, and it gets written into your report.
Late work#
Assessments are due at 17:00 on the stated Friday.
| Piece | Due | Late penalty | Hard stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Measured Queue | 26 Mar | 5% of available marks per day | 7 days, then zero |
| Whose Time It Was | 30 Apr | 5% of available marks per day | 7 days, then zero |
| The Queue Journal | 21 May | Not accepted late | The deadline |
| This piece is not accepted late, because entries written after the deadline cannot be evidence of a weekly habit. Request an extension before the deadline instead. | |||
| The Redesign | 28 May | Mixed, see the note | The session it happens in |
| The written proposal takes the ordinary per-day penalty. The defence happens in the week 12 field session and cannot be submitted late, so if you cannot attend, request an extension rather than a late submission. | |||
The two exceptions carry their reasons in the table. Both of them point at the extension process rather than at the late penalty, and both want to hear from you before the deadline rather than after it.
Extensions#
Up to five days, granted by the convenor by email, reason not documented, answered the same day. Longer than five days needs the university’s standard process.
Ask for an extension has the rest of it, including the form that submits the request and what each piece costs if you miss the deadline instead.
Academic integrity#
Your measurements have to be yours. This is the one thing that cannot be delegated, shared or generated, because the whole course is built on the claim that you personally stood next to a queue and wrote down what happened. Fabricated observation data is the most serious form of misconduct available in this course and it is treated as such.
Everything else is more relaxed than you might expect. Work with other people on the arithmetic. Compare histograms. Argue about somebody else’s redesign and take their idea if it is better than yours, and say whose it was.
On using a language model#
You may use one. Say where, in a line at the end of the piece.
There is one thing it cannot do for you and it is worth naming, because several students each year find this out late. It will produce fluent, confident, entirely invented observation data if you let it, and it will produce a redesign that helps everybody, which week 11 says is impossible. The marker reads for the named loser and for the raw sheets in your appendix, and those two things are where a generated report falls over.
Access and adjustments#
Several sessions involve standing outdoors for up to an hour and one involves a forty-minute walk. Every one of them has a seated or indoor alternative that carries the same material, and arranging it is routine rather than a concession. Email Tessa in week 1 and nobody else needs to know.
Week 10 works from inquiry reports, several of which concern deaths. You can take a report without fatalities, or take the written version and skip the room, and you do not have to give a reason.
Feedback#
Written feedback on The Measured Queue comes back within two teaching weeks, which puts it in your hands before Whose Time It Was is due. That ordering is deliberate and it is why the deadlines sit where they do.